A Short History of Julian Cope

Julian Cope was part of the Liverpool music scene in the late seventies and early eighties. It was the same scene which gave the world Echo & the Bunnymen, Dead Or Alive, Wah!, Frankie Goes To Hollywood amongst many others. It was based around Eric's, a club just down the road from the famous Cavern club. Cope, at various times, featured in bands with many of the other Liverpool artists and at one point, well for one rehearsal anyway, was in a band called the Crucial 3, with Ian McCulloch and Pete Wylie.

Julian Cope made his name in Teardrop Explodes who released a series of fine singles and albums which were always eclectic. Their sound was a mixture of exhuberance and eccentricity and helped make pop music interesting in the early eighties. The album 'Kilimanjaro', 'Wilder' and the unreleased 'Everyone Wants To Shag The Teardrop Explodes' were all fine examples of new wave pop. The tunes were catchy, the words interesting, the arrangements sussed and the energy high. They were a fine band and 'Kilimanjaro' especially is a great album, featuring their two finest pop moments in the tracks 'Treason' and 'Reward' with their great choruses and interesting structures.

Cope, though, became disillusioned with the band in 1983 and by 1984 was about to begin on a solo career which intially had him down as a modern day Syd Barrett. His solo debut was the somewhat traditional pop song 'World Shut Your Mouth'. It has a catchy chorus but is rather perfunctory and the album which followed seemed to signal the end of any notion of following a solo career.

'Fried' was slated by the music critics but is simply the sound of a troubled man cleansing his soul. It starts with 'Raynard The Fox'. A song which uses the metaphor of fox hunting to tell the singer's own story about media image and the state of his own mind. The song is followed by an attack on the former manager of the Teardrop Explodes, Bill Drummond. The album uses odd mixing techniques and has little or no bass on most of the tracks. The drums appear on just one channel, there is a toy piano and the overall feel is sparse and withdrawn. It didn't sell very well but set the blueprint for his future releases. It was a very personal album, made with little or no support from his record label and captures a moment in his turbulent life wonderfully well.

His next release was the slickly produced 'Saint Julian'. It showed he still craved after pop success and the celebrity limelight. It seemed to be written exactly for that purpose. Next came 'My Nation Underground' which shifted away from the 'Saint Julian' pop framework yet again. This was followed by 'Skellington' which was recorded in just one and a half days and hated by Island Records. Cope decided to release the album himself, which was a good thing since it meant the world got to hear the great lo-fi gem that is 'Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed'. The album seemed to be a spiritual successor to 'Fried'.

The album 'Peggy Suicide' took a while longer to record and produce. It's a double album that moves away from any self-doubt and negativity evident on his previous releases. It's full of positive, confident and purposeful songs and took on the theme of environmental concerns and the family. The album includes many fine songs like 'Beautiful Love', 'Easy Easy Rider' and 'Safesurfer'. They should have been hits but sadly the world had moved on.

'Peggy Suicide' was followed by two more albums about environmental concerns. One of them, called 'Autogeddon' was so called because his car exploded on his driveway and ever since Cope has walked places, mainly along ley lines and ancient routes. That's how he has been ever since: walking places, writing new-age books, eccentric behavior, eclectic musical output, ups and downs, highs and lows, just like the land he walks.